Lately

Wow, we have already been here for a month! Here are some updates:

• For our first 3 weeks here, we went to the ward that the internet told us to. It was a family ward and we expected there to be other young couples like us, since this is a college town. There was NO ONE our age and we had a hard time there. We started researching and calling around and found out we were supposed to be going to a married student ward. We went for the first time last week and it was gold. I think we're really going to like it. We already met so many cool couples and can't wait to get to know them better.
  

• Tanya only has two weeks left until she is done with her first term. They have 2 semesters and 3 terms a year here, and they are all fast and furious. She is taking 9 credits, but since the term is only 6 weeks long it's like she's taking 18+. She has worked so hard and actually reads all the long chapters in her books, which I rarely did throughout college. After this term she has a week and a half break before Fall semester, and her mom is coming to stay with us for that. It will be a lot of fun and she will be our first house guest.

• I am enjoying my job. I'm the marketing director for Sleep Center Hawaii, an overnight sleep study clinic for people who snore, have sleep apnea (where they quit breathing in their sleep for short periods), etc. I had kind of a rough start because the president was on another island my first week and no one would train me or help me out. They blindly sent me out to meet with doctors with no training and no idea what I was doing. This last week I was finally trained by the old marketing director and it has been better. Because doctors are the ones referring patients for sleep studies, I will be working a lot with them setting up luncheons and dinners where they can meet with our doctors, arranging and going to medical conventions, and meeting with them in their offices. I am also in charge of all the conventional marketing and implementing some online marketing, which they have never done before.

I think we have a problem . . .We are all out . . .

• So we live on the same property as a house full of BYU-H girls and share a yard with them. There's one girl in particular who we have been feuding with since day one. She insists on parking her ratty old car right outside our bedroom window, all up in our bidnass. She leaves at 5:30 every morning and since our windows have to be left open, her loud car wakes us up. Twice now we have asked her nicely if she will park somewhere else since her and us are the only ones with cars and our front yard is pretty much a huge parking lot. She refuses and is so snotty about it. She also always has immature boys over who yell and slam doors until all hours of the night, and she has this whiney voice that chills our souls. She moves out in 2 weeks (thank heavens) but what should we do until then? Start blocking her car in when she parks there? Leave it alone and wait until she moves? Try talking to her a THIRD time? Suggestions greatly appreciated.

Yesterday was glorious. We started the day going on a jungle hike to Manoa Falls near Honolulu. It was just what we needed after a long week.

A lot of the hike was through bamboo forests

It wasn't a big roaring waterfall, but it was about 150 feet high

Once we got to the falls there was another trail that kept going . . . so we took it.

Beautiful view of Manoa Valley . . . and my beautiful wifey.

After the hike we went to Costco for lunch and groceries, then drove to the North Shore to pick up my birthday present as well as some wax and a scraper for it . . .

And got some shave ice

Then we had some friends over for a BBQ in our yard - hamburglers and homemade fries. Then we went hot tubbing with them. They are cool and a lot like us, and they just moved here about the same time as us.

When we opened our hot tub, we found this little guy cooked alive. The girls next door must have done it, or their idiot friends.

Aloha!

Rod and Tan